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In appreciation of Culver's Pumpkin Spice Shake

Fifteen years ago the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte was a bit of a punchline to those of us who are chronically online. Then a few years went by and some things changed and at some point I looked around and realized that it was no longer cool to make fun of the PSL, and that everybody had become so chronically online that that phrase doesn't even mean anything anymore.

Mea culpa. Personally, I hate the PSL, but that's only because I have weird taste buds that hate a lot of things everybody else likes. That's nobody else's problem but mine, though; the practice of yucking another person's yum is cynical and pointless and I'm done doing it (at least where the PSL is concerned). A swipe at the PSL is widely understood as shorthand for a swipe at the demographics who like it. Generalizations are lazy and other people's fondness for the PSL is low-hanging fruit.

The PSL does, however, overshadow my favorite drink of the season, and that's the Pumpkin Spice Shake from Culver's. Midwesterners know Culver's as one of Wisconsin's best exports, right up there with cheese, cranberries, the blueprint for the Unemployment Compensation program, and ginseng. Every once in a while I run into someone who hates Culver's, but more often it's the common ground I share with people from out of state who don't know anything else about Wisconsin, and I've commiserated with more than one coastal dweller that the nationwide expansion of Culver's is taking too damn long.

Culver's likes to claim that they started the pumpkin spice craze by selling pumpkin as a seasonal frozen yogurt as far back as 1986, but I think we have to concede that Starbucks actually gets that distinction, mostly because it's a completely different product. The PSL from Starbucks is spiced, but contains no actual pumpkin. At Culver's the spice is a newish addition; when I first discovered the pumpkin shake, it had pumpkin, no spice.

The pumpkin is the main event. It's a distinctive flavor and you realize, when you sip it in a milkshake, that it really doesn't get the attention it deserves. Other ingredients like garlic and chocolate and cheese get to shine all over the place. Pumpkin is basically relegated to soups, squash substitutes, and a handful of desserts. As you drink more of the milkshake, you find yourself thinking about other edibles that might be good with pumpkin. Pancakes? Pizza? Pasta? Is pumpkin's appeal limited to foods that start with P?

Eventually, finishing the shake, I usually come to the sad conclusion that we probably have plumbed the depths of pumpkin's applications in foodstuffs, but at the same time it's undeniable that pumpkin is always the star of the show when it makes an appearance.

The pumpkin milkshakes always go away at some point, but they'll still be around for awhile yet, I plan to consume at least a couple more before the end of the season. If you have a local Culver's then I seriously recommend that you give it a try. If not, then I think you could hardly go wrong with this recipe: